AAEA President Susan Offutt called the meeting to order at 9:25 a.m.

I. Agenda review and approval

1. In addition to approval of July minutes, the board needs to approve the minutes of the December 11 conference call and the $75,000 loan discussed via e-mail.
2. Under action items, the board will discuss principal papers first, then the tracks.
3. Under action items, F becomes meetings general item.
4. In action items, the budget discussion will follow the general meetings discussion.
5. Under reports, D will include a report on the focus groups.
6. Related to Employment Services, (E) add an item

II. Minutes

a) July 2002 minutes

i) Under "Other Business," section 8, first paragraph, strike and Offutt.
ii) Other small typographic errors noted to be corrected.
iii) Motion to approve with revision moved by Jean Kinsey, seconded by Susan Offutt. The minutes were approved.

b) Conference Call December 11

i) Motion to approve made by Bill Boggess, seconded by Harry Kaiser. The minutes were approved.

c) $75,000 Loan

i) Action confirmed.

III. Action Items

a) Principal Papers
Jon Brandt led the group in the discussion and selection of this year's Principal Papers.

i) This year, the board used a process by which each board member allocated a fixed number of points among the 20 papers that were submitted. Brandt presented a spreadsheet of the vote tallies.
ii) It was then proposed that the group accept the three with the most votes to start and discuss all other proposals in turn.
iii) The principal paper submissions were discussed. The accepted papers were:

1. Does risk matter?
2. New developments in experiments for agricultural economics
3. Trade Liberalization and policy
   
4. Agricultural input markets in developing and transition economies
   
5. The social capital paradigm: Bridging across disciplines
   
6. Patent policy and agriculture
   
7. The Kyoto Protocol: issues and options for carbon sequestration in agriculture
   
8. The rapid rise of supermarkets in developing countries: opportunities and challenges for agrifood product suppliers

b) Discussion of joint papers with John Cranfield from the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society

i) The AAEA Executive board reviewed two submissions. These joint session papers will be published in Canadian Journal.
ii) The board agreed to move ahead with these two joint sessions.
iii) It was also noted that the AAEA principal paper submission "The Kyoto Protocol: issues and options for carbon sequestration in agriculture" has a cross-border perspective and may be considered as a possible joint session.

c) Track Proposals
The board approved the following track proposals, some with modifications.

1. FAMPS track
2. Extension Section track (jointly sponsored with the senior section)
3. IBES track
4. Food Safety and Nutrition track
5. International Committee track
6. Teaching Learning and Communications Section track
7. Rural Business and Cooperatives track
   
8. Agribusiness track
9. Graduate student track

d) Pre- and Post-conference sessions were approved.

i) Teaching, Learning Workshop
ii) C-FARE workshop in extramural funding from the Federal government

e) Annual Meeting general

i) Location of 2006 annual meeting
(1) The board discussed a previous decision to adopt a four-year rotation for the location of the annual meeting, which would put the 2006 meeting back in Long Beach.
(a) The rotation would be:

(i) Denver (2004)
(ii) Providence (2005)
(iii) Long Beach (2006)
(iv) City to be determined (2007)
(v) Denver (2008)
(vi) Providence (2009)

(2) Jon Brandt moved to accept Long beach as the 2006 meeting site. The motion was seconded by Bill Boggess.
(3) Discussion revolved around the rationale behind choosing Long Beach initially. The board had decided to move the Annual Meeting around the country and then identified potential cities where the meeting may be held. It was asked that the board generate suggestions for the 2007 meeting. Many board members suggested the Northwest region of the country.
(4) Motion approved.

f) Finance Committee Report/Budget Presentation

i) Betty Eckebrecht, AAEA's Chief Financial Officer discussed the variance report

(1) AAEA didn't have the income that had been budgeted for, accounting for a large deficit.

(2) The Association's expenses are in line with the expense side of the budget, but the income was significantly short.

ii) Finance Committee Report

(1) Bill Boggess, Finance Committee Chair, explained to the board that the committee had created three scenarios to help solve the structural budget problem. It is noted that AAEA cannot continue to operate a similar budget to years past, decreases in membership and meeting attendance amount to a decline in revenue. Therefore, AAEA has been borrowing from reserve funds in previous years to maintain its operating budgets. The reserves are declining rapidly, making necessary major budget changes. Thus, the three scenarios.

(a) Base budget scenario makes the following assumptions:
1. Adopt previously approved $25 increase in annual meeting registration fees
2. Choices on-line transition
3. 3,000 members
4. 1,400 attendees at the Annual Meeting
(i) Operating with this budget for the next three years, the deficit stays the same and the reserve balance declines to $225,000 by 2006.

(b) Reduced Expenses Scenario calls for the following additional changes:
1. 10 percent cut in administrative/executive costs
a. Totally eliminate giving other groups money
b. Delaying training and software expenses
(i) Operating with this budget over the next three years, the deficit is slightly reduced and the reserve is depleted to $425,000.

(c) Increased Revenue and Reduced Expenses Scenario set the following standards:
1. 3,100 members
2. 1,600 attendees at the Annual Meeting
3. $20,000 in meeting sponsorships
(ii) The deficit drops to $58,000 and the reserve balance to about $770,000 by 2006
(iii) This scenario is much closer to stabilizing the reserves.

(2) The committee presented the board with short-term objectives, including growing membership, stabilizing costs, increasing meeting attendance and an overall 5 percent cut. It was noted that Choices can't be cut at this point without really sacrificing membership good will.

(3) Long-term objectives, according to the committee, include making AAEA more attractive to applied economists, opening membership to different pool of economists, dues increases, implementing charges for publications, modifying registration fees and examining areas where the foundation may be able to contribute financially. The finance committee recommends a re-evaluation of what the association charges for the services and publications it provides.

(4) The association must effectively communicate the structural problem to the membership.

(5) Immediate options

(a) Raising the cost of attending the 2003 Annual Meeting in Montreal

(i) Harry Kaiser moves that the board increase registration rates to $250, Joe Glauber seconds the motion.

(ii) Motion carries unanimously

(6) Motion to increase the late registration fee by $100 made by Harry and seconded by Joe

(a) The motion was tabled pending further information

(b) Upon further investigation, it was found that the late registration rates are already quite high. Motion dropped.

ii) Budget adoption

(1) Motion that the board adopt the reduced expenses budget put forward by Bill Boggess, seconded by David Zilberman.

(2) Several were concerned about the budget's cuts to organizations such as C-FARE, as there is a strong possibility that C-FARE won't be around if we make these cuts. It was noted that AAEA's membership needs to be better educated regarding the benefits of being involved with C-FARE.

(3) Jon Brandt moved to amend the motion to retain C-FARE at $11,000 and leave the other organizations at the 2002 level of support. The amendment was seconded by Joe Glauber. Amendment carries.

(4) The motion as amended passes.

iii) Senior Member Annual Meeting Rates

(1) David Zilberman moves to raise the Annual Meeting rates for senior members proportionately to regular members:

(a) $200 for early registration
(b) $275 for regular registration
(c) $330 for late and onsite registration

(2) Joe Glauber seconded the motion.

(3) Motion passed.

iv) There was discussion regarding increasing guest rates, or charging separately for the reception. Overall feeling was that this should be left as is.

v) Future board meetings. To help reduce costs, the spring board meeting will be held by conference call.

IV. Reports

a) AJAE
i) Peter Berck reported that The American Journal of Agricultural Economics received about the same number of submissions this year as last, publishing more pages. The journal increases by approximately 10 articles per year.

b) RAE
i) Susan Offutt reported that the editors would like to publish the Review of Agricultural Economics four times per year and continuously on-line. There is an issue regarding whether the articles will be able to be published as they are accepted, to be discussed with the publisher.
ii) They have recently calculated the acceptance rate; and about 30 percent of articles submitted are published.
iii) On-line access to the tracking system for authors will be launched. Each author will be given a number to track their articles. The average turnaround time from submission to editors' response is currently about 90 days.
iv) Costs to the AAEA for RAE will rise in 2004, when ERS will no longer edit and subsidize the journal.

c) Choices
i) Donna Dunn reports that she has not seen a contract from the University of Missouri, which is expected to manage on-line Choices. She has seen storyboards as to give an indication of the look of Web site.
ii) The last print issue should be out shortly.
iii) Peter Barry has agreed to serve as editor of Choices for three years.

d) External Image and Name Change Task Force
i) Because of scheduling difficulties, the focus groups of economists and policy-makers at the ASSA meetings did not take place. This was the second phase of the work of the task force.
ii) For the present, the Board decided not to allocate funding for focus groups and decided to ask the task force to consider alternative ways of gathering information that would help the profession better understand how it is perceived by peers in the discipline, by users of agricultural economists' knowledge and by employers.

e) Employment Services
i) AAEA should begin to build catalog/library of information. The association needs to be the institutional memory of agricultural economics

V. Adjourn

i) Susan thanked Bill Boggess, Susan Capalbo, Pat Westhoff, Betty Eckebrecht and Donna Dunn for all their work on the budget.
ii) The Executive Board will hold the spring meeting via conference call. Beyond that, the group will meet in Montreal, July 25.
iii) Meeting adjourned at 5:30 pm